Career Civil Servants Research Articles

LIETUVOS MINISTERIJŲ AUKŠTESNIŲJŲ KARJEROS VALSTYBĖS TARNAUTOJŲ KAITA IR POLITIZACIJA 2001–2015 METAIS

In this article the results of the research on the turnover and politicization of senior career civil servants (in particular, secretaries, state secretaries and chancellors) in Lithuanian ministries in the period of 2001–2015 are provided.The above-mentioned research revealed that over the analysed period the average extent of politicization of senior career civil servants in the ministries amounted to 39%, while the total share of politicized servants varied between 25% and 45%. It exceeds the politicisation of the management in the Lithuanian government agencies and agencies under the ministries (19%) and state-owned enterprises (36%), however, lags behind that of managers in Lithuania’s educational institutions and personal health care organisations (43% and 53%, respectively).The highest politicisation was observed in the ministries of the interior, transport and communications, and agriculture, while the lowest – in the ministries of finance and justice. Evidence indicates the existence of statistically significant relationship between the amount of state budget allocations for institutions and agencies in the minister’s field of activity, and the degree of politicisation of senior career civil service in the respective ministries. It confirms the notion that public sector organisations rich in financial resources are the most appealing targets for political parties seeking to politicize.The analysis has revealed that demand-side factors, such as the scale of alteration of ruling majorities or alteration of parties holding minister portfolio, are insufficient to explain the turnover and politicisation of ministerial senior career civil servants. In some cases, politically motivated appointments and dismissals of these servants were made regardless of alterations of parties holding minister portfolio or even person serving as minister. Thus, supply-side factors, namely the existence of suitable partisan candidates to fill high-ranking positions in the ministries and opportunities for politicisation, have higher explanatory power.Furthermore, the research revealed the existence of positive relationship between party entrenchment in power and politizication of ministerial senior career civil servants. Parties having relatively more governing experience (the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party and, to a lesser extent, the Liberal and Centre Union and the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats) were more capable of offering suitable partisan candidates for ministerial appointments, thus, politicized relatively more. On the other hand, the size of a party, as such, does not influence its abilities to politicize due to high requirements for candidates to fill high-ranking ministerial positions. Yet, the largest parties also happen to have more governing experience. As a result, they not only had higher capacities to politicize but could successfully take advantage of them, as well.In addition, the substantial difference in politicisation strategies of ideologically opposite political parties was observed. Left parties politicized more while appointing civil servants, right parties – while dismissing them. With an aim to create favourable conditions for politicisation, parties on both sides of political spectrum carried out ministerial structural reforms. However, opportunities provided by the latter were exploited differently by ideologically opposite parties. With the reform of 2002, left-wing governing parties caused structural de-politicisation but took advantage of new appointments to de facto politicize. Completely different situation was observed with regard to the reform of 2009 carried out by right-wing governing parties. The latter conditioned structural politicisation but rarely de facto politicized.Following the reform of 2002, the level of de facto politicisation in ministerial senior career civil service increased, maintaining relatively stable during 2003–2008. Only after the reform of 2009 a decrease in the level of de facto politicisation was observed. This trend did not change even after left-wing parties returned to power in 2012. It is attributable to the changed propotions of career civil servants and those of political (personal) confidence in the ministries. The reform of 2009 resulted in clear quantitative advantage of civil servants of political (personal) confidence against career civil servants. Consequently, the need of the ministers to expand their political teams through de facto politicisation of ministerial career civil servants was reduced. In other words, negative relationship between structural and de facto politicisation was identified.For the future research on politicisation of Lithuanian public sector organisations it is suggested to analyse turnover and politicisation of the same groups of ministerial senior career civil servants in the period not covered by this research (i. e. 1994– 2001), also testing the relationship between structural and de facto politicisation following the ministerial structural reforms of 1996 and 1998.

PENGARUH TINGKAT PENDAPATAN DAN TINGKAT PENDIDIKAN TERHADAP PERILAKU KONSUMTIF WANITA KARIR DI LINGKUNGAN PEMERINTAH PROVINSI RIAU

Consumptive behavior today is a phenomenon that is prevalent in many societies. No exception career woman to do the job requires a supporting infrastructure. But in fulfilling these needs are often trapped in Consumptive behavior. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of educational level and income level of the Consumptive behavior of career women in the Provincial Government of Riau. This study uses multiple linear regression analysis. To determine the influence of independent variables on the dependent variable partially used t test, whereas to determine the effect of independent variables on the dependent variable simultaneously used F test research population is all women career civil servant status and positions in the Riau Provincial Government amounted to 365 people. While the number of samples using Slovin formula and obtained a sample of 78 people. Data obtained using questionnaires, analyzed with regression at α = 0:05. The results showed that simultaneous two variables level of education and income levels significantly influence Consumptive behavior with α significance level of 0.002. And a variable level of education is partially no effect on Consumptive behavior with α significance level of 0.632, while the variable income levels partially significant effect on Consumptive behavior with α significance level of 0.005.

Does it Matter Who Works at the Center? A Comparative Policy Analysis of Executive Styles

This article develops the concept of executive style to explore how variations in the relationships between politicians, career civil servants, and political appointees affect the types of policy outputs. A comparative analysis of home care policies in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia finds that the former’s civil service executive style – where professional civil servants work in close partnership with politicians in all phases of the policy process – led to the development of an innovative home care program with a long-term vision, whereas the latter’s politicized executive style – where politicians marginalize the role of civil servants in favor of political appointees – led to frequent changes in policy largely driven by short-term considerations.

Strategi Pengembangan Karier PNS Fungsional Umum di Institut Pertanian Bogor

<p>The main issues in the field of human resources is a state civil officials on the quality and distribution of civil servants, therefore we need a research to know the civil servant career development strategy. Process and career development should be professional career development oriented of civil servants which means not only the structural purpose, but also to developing expertise towards functional. Thus, the position of the functional has a role as equal partners in a structural position. The purpose of this study is to identify what are the main priorities of the factors, actors and objectives as well as the recommendation of alternative strategies are most influential on the development of common functional civil servants career in IPB. The research was conducted at IPB and the Bureau of Personnel Culture and Education Ministry Secretariat using descriptive analysis and AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) methods. The results of the descriptive analysis is from 1.500 civil servants education personnel only 14,3% certain functional officials in IPB, thus 83,7% is common functional PNS included structural officials which selectively will be converted to be specific functional civil service officials. Results obtained from AHP processing the alternative strategy most recommended is the establishment of assessment centers (0,482) by actor Vice Rector of Resources and Strategic Studies (0,498), through the strengthening of organizational factors (0,357) with the aim of increasing professionalism (0,600), that all are the main priorities which influence to the development of a common functional IPB civil servants career.</p><p>Keywords: civil servant quality and distribution, professionalism, carrier development strategy, assesment center</p>

Régimen jurídico básico de las relaciones de puestos de trabajo y estatuto de los funcionarios locales

El Estatuto Básico del Empleado Público, lejos de aclarar el sistema de ordenación de los recursos humanos en las Administraciones públicas, abre la puerta a que puedan generarse diversos modelos de función pública. De igual forma, en el ámbito local la carencia de una regulación sistemática del estatuto de funcionarios propios al servicio de las Administraciones locales hace necesario extraer de las normas estatales su contenido básico que, por otro lado, se ha venido constatado por la propia realidad administrativa de las Corporaciones locales: todas poseen o una RPT o un catálogo de puestos de trabajo y, desde luego, una plantilla. Por otro lado, se aborda, desde un punto vista meramente introductorio, el impacto del concepto y contenido de las relaciones de puestos de trabajo en el estatuto funcionarial local y las consecuencias para la carrera de éstos.

An Evaluation of Corruption Practices in Ministries, Departments, Agencies in Public Sector in Developing Nations

Corruption practice in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in public sector has become a way of life and it is synonym with government official, a culture, phenomena, religion or pathological. Corruption is the misuse of entrusted power for private benefit and includes; bribes, cronyism and nepotism, political donations, kickbacks and artificial pricing and fraud of all kinds, theft or misuse of asset, improper use of influence in a transaction for own benefit and falsification of financial statement. While questions on fraud and corruption practices have received considerable attention in the wider international community especially on inter-country comparison; there is a considerable dearth of literatures on inter-country comparison between developing countries. This study evaluated the effect of corruption practices in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in public sector in developing economies; specifically it examined the impact of corruption practices on the stewardship role of a career civil servant in public sector. Stewardship theory is used as a motivation to explain the level of corruption practices in public sector. The research approach entails literature review that was carried out to identify the knowledge gap in previous studies and use survey research technique. Literature study is complemented with the use of nonparametric and descriptive statistics techniques and is applied on primary data obtained in a population of four (4) public MDAs in Cameroon and Nigeria. Finding in the study revealed that corruption practice is an obstacle to stewardship role of civil servant in MDAs. Also, the study revealed that in both countries bribe or kickback are offered before obtaining services from civil servant.

The Turnover and Politicisation of Lithuanian Public Sector Managers

AbstractThis article presents the results of our research on party patronage and state politicisation in different Lithuanian public sector organisations (government agencies and agencies under the ministries, state-owned enterprises, personal health care and educational institutions). Although repeating alterations of governments best explained the frequent turnover of some public sector heads, their politicisation was related to the length of party rule in power, beliefs of the political and administrative elite and density of the party networks. The legal protection of civil service jobs was only important in the case of the agencies under the ministries whose managers always held career civil service positions. Furthermore, substantial variation in the scope of politicisation was related to such administrative factors as the political salience of policy areas and organisational functions, as well as budget size, which suggested different motivations and opportunities of party patronage in the Lithuanian public sector.

The Clerks of the Four Horsemen (Part II, George Sutherland and Pierce Butler)

The Clerks of the Four Horsemen (Part II, George Sutherland and Pierce Butler) BARRY CUSHMAN This is the second part of a two-part article. Please see volume 39, no. 3, pages 368-424 for the Introduction and Part I, discussing the clerks to James C. McReynolds and Willis Van Devanter. The Sutherland Clerks Justice Sutherland served from 1922 to 1938, but during that time he had only four clerks. The first, whom he inherited from his predecessor in office, was a career civil servant. The others were all graduates of George Washington University’s Law School, and went on to enjoy interesting and highly successful careers in private practice. Samuel Edward Widdifield was an 1898 graduate of the Detroit College of Law who clerked for Sutherland during the 1922 and 1923 Terms.1 Widdifield might be character­ ized as a career or serial clerk: he clerked for four different Justices. Bom in Uxbridge, Ontario, Widdifield moved to Michigan as a young boy in 1880 and was naturalized in Detroit in 1896. He was admitted to practice in Michigan in 1898, and in Massachusetts in 1904. Early in his career, Widdifield handled collections in the office ofa Detroit lawyer and practiced with the Traverse City, Michigan firm of Gilbert & Widdifield. He then moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he was secre­ tary and law assistant to the president of the Stanley Electrical Company.2 He first came to the Court in 1904 at the age of twenty-nine to clerk for Justice Rufus Peckham. After Peck­ ham’s death in 1909, Widdifield clerked for Justice Joseph Rucker Lamar during the 1910 and 1911 Terms.3 Following his clerkship with Justice Lamar, Widdifield engaged briefly in private practice in Lansing, Michigan before returning to Washington to serve as a secretary to Senator James P. Clarke ofArkansas and as a messengerto the Senate Commerce Committee from 1913 to 1916.4 He then returned to the Court to clerk for Justice John Hessin Clarke, 56 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY and, upon Clarke’s resignation in 1922, Widdifield moved to the chambers of Clarke’s successor, Justice Sutherland.5 After two years with Sutherland, Widdifield left to serve for more than five years as assistant counsel to the German Mixed Claims Commission in the State Department. In 1930 he operated his own real estate business in North Beach Maryland, where he served as mayor. From December of 1930 to August of 1931 he worked as an assistant clerk to the House Judiciary Commit­ tee. Widdifield then returned to the Court as assistant clerk, a position that he held for eighteen years until his retirement in 1949.6 In 1937 he sought to return to the position of law clerk, unsuccessfully applying for a position with the incoming Justice Hugo Black.7 He died in 1960 at the age ofeighty-five, a widower survived by two children, six grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.8 Alan E. Gray clerked for Sutherland from the 1924 term through the 1930 term.9 Gray may have been the most colorful of the Sutherland clerks. His father was a Scottish immigrant who came to Minnesota at a young age and settled in Grafton, North Dakota in 1891.'° Alan was bom in 1899, took his B.A. from the University ofNorth Dakota in 1921, and received his law degree from George Washington University in 1924.11 That year he married fellow Graftonite Grace Lunding Hope, and the couple moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland.12 Following his clerkship with Sutherland, Gray remained for several years in Washington,13 where he engaged in a law practice focused on tax matters.14 By 1938, the Grays had moved to Southern California, where they divorced by 1948. Gray quickly married Joan Kettering in 1949, but was as quickly divorced from her the following year. He then married Jan Hanson Fisher, who left him a widower. In 1967 he married his old Grafton schoolmate Helen Tombs, to whom he remained married until his death.15 Gray practiced in Southern California for the balance of his career.16 He continued to specialize in the tax area,17 and was recognized as an “income tax expert.”18 This...

Collaborative Governance Regime and the Responsive Governance in Ogun State : A Study of Ogun State Council of Elders

The public administration system in Nigeria which has been traditional and patterned towards the bazaar canteen model of Riggs has over the years led to gross inefficiency and inability to meet the needs of the citizenry. The failings of the traditional administrative system necessitated an investigation of the adoption of collaborative governance regime as a tool for achieving responsive governance. The study conducted in Ogun State, one of the 36 states in Nigeria, utilized qualitative data, and primary data were collected through interview of 97 respondents drawn from eight selected local governments in the state. The key informants included top government officials at state and local government levels, career civil servants, community leaders, traditional rulers, as well as members of the Ogun State Council of Elders. Data collected were content analyzed. The adoption of collaborative governance between the state government and the Ogun State Council of Elders led to resolution of several crises in the state; economic development programmes and projects; enhancement of qualitative education in the state; effective poverty reduction; and grassroots development. The study suggested that embracing collaborative governance regime in a prismatic society such as Nigeria ensures the attainment of responsive governance in the society, and equally short circuit the excesses of corrupt officials following the involvement of educated and enlightened citizens.

Decision-making in administrative proceeding

Administrative decision-making by official who conducting the administrative procedure may have a number of advantages over the decisionmaking by the senior official which manages by the administrative authority. However, to make that such a novelty have positive effects, it is necessary, next to the amendments to the Law on Administrative Procedure, to create a number of legal and factual assumptions, on whom are based highly politicized and professionalised administrative systems today. In order to create the legal conditions for the introduction of innovations in administrative proceedings in the Republic of Serbia, it is necessary to appropriately modify, firstly certain provisions of the Law on Public Administration, as the basic systemic regulation in this area, and then the Law on Civil Servants, as the basic status regulation, so the civil servant career become less dependent on the will of officials who manage by the administrative authorities. Also, it is essential to solve a number of other issues on a proper legal way, such as way of harmonizing administrative practice within the same administrative authority, a way of solving the appeals in the case of first instance decisions made by independent administrative authority, different rules for conflict of interest with the state officers who may be authorized officials in administrative proceedings, etc.

Управління професійним навчанням посадових осіб місцевого самоврядування (досвід Франції)

Проаналізовано досвід управління професійним навчанням посадових осіб місцевого самоврядування у Франції. Охарактеризовано нормативно-правове забезпечення професійної підготовки посадових осіб місцевого самоврядування та систему управління, зокрема основні напрямки діяльності Національного центру територіальної державної служби (CNFPT), його міждепартаментських і регіональних філіалів («делегацій»), Національного інституту територіальних досліджень (INET). Показано тісний взаємозв’язок між розвитком кар’єри державних службовців та їх неперервною професійною підготовкою. Розкрито основні складові системи професійної підготовки, якими виступають базове початкове довгострокове й наступне періодичне короткотермінове професійне навчання. Висвітлено структурні компоненти короткотермінового професійного навчання. Значне місце відведено аналізу підготовки викладацького корпусу освітніх закладів, що забезпечують підвищення кваліфікації державних службовців.

El ejercicio por los funcionarios interinos de funciones reservadas tras la Ley 27/2013, de Reforma Local

La nueva redacción dada al artículo 92.3 de la Ley 7/1985, reguladora de las Bases del Régimen Local, por la Ley 27/2013, de racionalización y sostenibilidad de la Administración Local, ha supuesto -al menos en teoría- que sólo los funcionarios de carrera puedan ejercer funciones que impliquen la participación directa o indirecta en el ejercicio de las potestades públicas o en la salvaguardia de los intereses generales. Esta cuestión va más allá de las funciones a ejercer por los funcionarios pues la reserva de funciones es también la nota diferenciadora respecto al personal laboral.
 Este artículo analiza los motivos y las cuestiones que plantea esta novedosa restricción, así como las implicaciones que pudiera tener en el ámbito de las Entidades Locales y en particular en el ejercicio de las funciones que ejercen los funcionarios interinos.

The role of knowledge management in enhancing government service-delivery in Kenya

This article explores the role that knowledge management (KM) can play to support governance, performance effectiveness, and service delivery in government agencies in Kenya. It further addresses the challenges and problems which act as impediments to introducing KM and engendering a knowledge society. A major factor impeding the effective introduction of knowledge management practices is that the Kenyan civil service is particularly embedded in bureaucracy and very few incentives are provided to encourage civil servants to generate, distribute and share knowledge and information. Many employees in the Kenyan civil service are traditional career civil servants, who cannot envisage and appreciate the potential of knowledge management and the benefits of knowledge leveraging. They are also wary of sharing knowledge, as they think that by hoarding knowledge they enhance their value and competitiveness. The paper is based on data derived from the literature that was integrated with results obtained from a study conducted by Ondari-Okemwa (2006) for a PhD research project.

"Accidents and Emergencies: Welfare and Safety in Europe and North America, c.1750-2000": 9-11 September 2013, Oxford, UK.

A three-day conference titled Accidents and Emergencies: Welfare and Safety in Europe and North America, c.1750-2000 and organized by Mike Esbester (University of Portsmouth) and Tom Crook (Oxford Brookes University) was recently held at Oxford Brookes University. With funding from Oxford Brookes, the Centre for European and International Studies Research at the University of Portmouth, the Economic History Society of the UK, and the Wellcome Trust, it brought together approximately forty-five historians, social scientists, and practitioners from across Europe and North America to discuss health, safety, and risk in a historical context. Following pre-distributed papers, discussions on a range of topics were spread over twelve panels, alongside two plenary discussions and a keynote lecture. One focus of the conference was industrial health and safety through history, and the ways that practices of risk management have been marked by change and continuity over two-and-a-half centuries. This included such varied topics as shipbuilding, coal mining, munitions factories, and sewer gas, with much of the discussion suggesting that cultures of risk management long predate our current preoccupation with the subject. One of the benefits of such approaches was that with similar time frames though varied national contexts, a comparative transnational perspective was readily apparent, showing many similarities alongside some notable differences. Furthermore, these approaches were complemented by the involvement of practitioners from the field of health and safety--such as John Rimington, a former career civil servant and director-general of the UK Health and Safety Executive from 1983 to 1995--who could provide perspectives from their own working careers. Elsewhere, there were excellent panels on the history of road safety and accident prevention outside of the workplace, which constituted another major theme of the conference. This was introduced by Bill Luckin's (University of Bolton) excellent keynote plenary on the early, mostly pre-motorized nineteenth-century history of drunk driving in Britain, and the ineffectual legal attempts to tackle it. This sparked a debate about whether attempts at reform were hobbled by a fundamentally conservative culture of mobility and safety. Many of these themes were developed by later speakers, who focused on road-safety campaigns during the twentieth century, with talks on Poland, Britain, Canada, and Germany, among others. The mostly interwar and postwar time frames of these talks allowed for unusually focused discussions on the often very transnational approaches taken by practitioners of road safety through the twentieth century, shedding light on this poorly understood though highly influential field. This was further emphasized by Marjan Hagenzieker's (Delft University) innovative approach, which sought to identify changing research trends in the English-speaking road-safety community over the twentieth century by quantitative analysis of the main road-safety research journals. Alongside these panels, there were also those participants who approached the question of risk from the alternative perspectives of disease and public health, the role of financial markets in both managing and creating risks, and the role of the police and coercion in controlling risk. I contributed to a panel on Policing Risk, where the roles of surveillance and discipline more generally were discussed on both the empirical and theoretical levels. In the ensuing discussion, it was noted that historically, surveillance had often occurred across all levels of organizational hierarchies as a means of managing risk, in contrast to big brother and panopticon models of surveillance. Another panel, Selling Risk and Safety, raised questions about how insurance companies have sought to lessen risk in new industries like aviation, while other sectors like gambling have attempted to enhance it in the interests of entertainment and profit. Josef Lilljegren's (Umea University) paper on corporate-governance strategies in the interwar Swedish insurance industry stood out as another welcome foray into quantitative methodology, with an innovative data visualization approach. This chimed well with Arwen Mohun's (University of Delaware) plenary keynote speech, which made clear that risks could be both mitigated and also purposefully created, often for complex reasons concerning retaining agency, demonstrating leadership, or even entertainment. Taking a mostly historiographical and theoretical approach, Mohun traced the arrival of risk as a theme for historical discussion to the upheavals of the 1980s, while arguing that new approaches... Language: en

Contemporary Career Civil Servant Myths: The Romanian Case?

The idea of career success is accompanied often by false beliefs, myths or simply excuses when we find the path is not the right one. Our society values the people who make careers or employees who are building a successful professional identity. Sometimes, however, the road is confused with the destination - it's good to remember that making career being careerist is actually an end in itself. This paper wants to describe the perceptions about career myths regarding the contemporary Romanian civil servant. Many valuable ideas are described in this paper and need to be taken into consideration. In the literature and practice of public human resource management circulate many myths about career planning and development and career management. Generally speaking, explicit tests relating to perceptions about career realities can be subjective, can be oriented in the wrong direction and can lead to a misleading picture. They can sometimes block career planning and development and also career management.

LIETUVOS VIEŠOJO SEKTORIAUS ORGANIZACIJŲ VADOVŲ KAITA IR POLITIZACIJA

This introductory article presents the common research questions of this special issue and offers a joint framework for analysing the change and politicisation of the senior levels of management of different groups of Lithuanian public sector organisations (agencies, state-owned enterprises, personal health care organisations and educational organisations). A comparison of all contributions to this special issue revealed that repeating alterations of governing majorities and governments best explain the frequent turnover of heads of different Lithuanian public sector organisations (except those of personal health care and educational organisations). However, their politicisation is associated with party entrenchment in power, density of the party networks and politicians’ beliefs. The factor of civil service legislation and its enforcement is only important in the case of ministerial agencies whose heads hold career civil service positions. Furthermore, variations in the scope of politicisation are related to such administrative factors as the political salience of policy areas and organisational functions, as well as the budget size. This indicates different politicisation motivations and opportunities in the public sector. Therefore, it is the interplay of political and administrative factors that determines the change and politicisation of management in various public sector organisations. In the context of alternating ruling majorities, changing governments and positions, patronage strategies are exercised by political parties and incumbent managers on the ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’ basis. These strategies are more actively pursued in policy areas and organisations that are characterised by higher political salience, larger funding or revenue. The likelihood and scope of politicisation is also affected by such facilitating factors as party networks or such constraining factors as legal regulation of the civil service.These results of politicisation research to a large extent correspond to the previous theoretical propositions based on a game theory (prisoner’s dilemma) approach. Competing party blocs exercise patronage strategies, responding to their opponents’ behaviour in office. If one party bloc politicises the positions of career managers, a competing bloc attempts to force the incumbent managers out of office through organisational restructuring and changing the status of civil service positions. Although political parties may be aware of the negative effects of politicisation, as rational actors they may have no interest in discontinuing their patronage practices in the absence of party cooperation and credible agreements concerning the professional management of public sector managers.The mechanism of ‘top-down’ politicisation can account for the level of politicisation and its dynamics at the central level, especially among the government agencies and state-owned enterprises. However, unlike at the central level, managers of local-level organisations (especially personal health care organisations, educational organisations and forestry companies) are involved in a different politicisation game. First, if under the ‘top-down’ politicisation mechanism political parties exercise patronage in order to reward loyal party members and control decision-making, under the ‘bottom-up’ politicisation mechanism some heads of public sector organisations themselves engage in patronage relations in order to keep their managerial positions, reward loyal members of their organisations and control organisational performance. Second, these mechanisms also differ in terms of politicisation results and processes: if ‘top-down’ politicisation results in high politicisation and low institutional stability (frequent organisational changes and managers’ turnover), the mix of a relatively stable institutional environment and high levels of actual politicisation can co-exist under ‘bottom-up’ politicisation.

CHANGE AND POLITICISATION OF LITHUANIAN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES AND AGENCIES UNDER THE MINISTRIES

This article analyses the change and politicisation of management in the Lithuanian government agencies and agencies under the ministries in the period 1990–2012. Changes in de jure politicisation of the higher civil service depended on structural and civil service reforms. The start of Lithuania’s accession to the EU marked a decline in structural politicisation, but de facto politicisation increased throughout this period. However, the politicisation trend was opposite during the 2008–2012 Government term: structural politicisation faced an upward trend, while actual politicisation was going down. Our analysis of the Lithuanian agency politicisation also revealed some differences in the pattern of politicisation according to the Lithuanian political parties. The Lithuanian Social Democratic Party more frequently pursues the strategy of de facto politicisation by recruiting agency heads involved in its political activities, while the Homeland Union (Lithuanian Christian Democrats) tends to adopt the structural form of politicisation by using government-wide civil service reforms to dismiss the incumbent managers. This research indicated that de facto politicisation of the Lithuanian agencies is relatively small with only 19.1% of all agency heads engaged in party networks. However, this measure of politicisation is more pesimistic than optimistic – it ispossible the higher civil service employs more politically affiliated managers than our analysis based on personal biographies was able to detect. Furthermore, there is variation across different types of agencies. Heads of the government agencies who acted as political appointees at certain periods of time were more politicised than managers in charge of the ministerial agencies who held career civil service positions more frequently. The turnover of agency managers is best explained by alterations of ruling majorities and governments, taking into account more the intensive turnover of agency managers during the Lithuanian governments controlled by the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party. Cases of one government agency and one agency under the ministries indicated how their managers were replaced after actual changes of government. However, there is no single straightforward explanation of politicisation. First, politicisation of the agency management could be explained in terms of certain ‘push’ factors: politicisation is associated with party entrenchment in power and density of the party networks. Political parties with longer government experience have more opportunities to make use of political appoitments. Second, politicisation is linked to some ‘pull’ factors: party patronage is exercised more frequently over more politically salient areas of public services. Therefore, the mix of political and administrative factors can be used to understand the change and politicisation of the Lithuanian agency management. On the one hand, the political parties that are better entrenched in power possess longer lists of loyal candidates for filling up managerial positions in the Lithuanian agencies. On the other hand, political parties tend to control the performance of more salient agencies through politically motivated appointments and dismissals. However, it is politicians’ beliefs and their power to exercise party patronage that brings politicisation in the higher civil service. The future research of politicisation can assess how civil service legislation and its enforcement affect the dynamics of politicisation in the Lithuanian agencies. Also, it could be useful to examine the change and politicisation of management in other Lithuanian public sector organisations.

A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust by Mary Fulbrook

A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust by Mary Fulbrook. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, 2012, xviii, 421 pp. $34.95 US (cloth). One of the enduring questions of Holocaust research concerns the level of awareness of Germans regarding the horrifying policies of the Shoah. A well-crafted myth emerged from the ashes of Germany after 1945 that those involved on the periphery of the Nazi genocide simply knew about it. With meticulous research and vivid prose, Mary Fulbrook, in A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust, illustrates that the level of participation in the final solution reached deeply within the civilian administration of the Hitler state. In complementing the ground-breaking work of Christopher Browning, she also describes how ordinary these civil servants were in the context of their chosen professions. Her intent is to shed light on this overlooked aspect of the Nazi regime (p. 337-38). She then adds a personal layer to the presentation: the wife of the main focus of the piece was her godmother and she had met the civilian administrator after the war. Fulbrook asserts that, This book is, then, about the fate of the Jews of Bedzin ... it is not about my mother or her best friend (p. 22). Fulbrook then proceeds to give us a lesson in the scholar's craft as she confronts the dilemma of a personal attachment and a historian's distance. Fulbrook centres on Bqdzin (Bendsburg), Poland, a small, primarily Jewish town, only twenty-five miles from and its Landrat (civilian administrator), Dr. Udo Klausa. Klausa was a career civil servant, the son of a civil servant, father, husband, Catholic, and a loyal Nazi party member; an ordinary German. His administration would lead to the deaths of thousands of Jews. In the first part of the book, Fulbrook describes the rather mundane existence of Bedzin before the war. She explains that Polish-Jewish relations should be neither idealized nor demonized (p. 37), although survivors reported instances of Polish anti-Semitism. However, with the Nazi invasion of September, 1939, conditions for Bedzin's Jews quickly deteriorated, beginning with the horrific burning of the Great Synagogue and surrounding homes containing several hundred Jews. Following this introduction, Fulbrook presents Dr. Udo Klausa, the Landrat of the Landkreis, or county of Bqdzin. With access to Dr. Klausa's memoirs as well as personal correspondence between the Landrat's wife and her mother, Fulbrook is able to piece together the atmosphere of the creeping terror awaiting the local Jewish population as well as the attempts to distance the participants from any real responsibility. Frau Klausa's letters are especially enlightening, as they illustrate the extent to which she witnessed the sights and sounds of genocide, for example, while commenting on the lack of food in the stores (p. 299). Dr. Klausa also claimed to nothing about the fate of Bgdzin's Jews, asserting after the war that, At the time I did not know about this function of Auschwitz (p. 256). Fulbrook skillfully contrasts the archival evidence with Klausa's construction of his resistance to the real Nazi policies. …

Civil Service and the Challenge of Productivity in Nigeria

A key challenge facing the country in general is how to ensure the socio-economic and political development of the citizenry. Development, in all its facets, has remained a mirage in spite of the favourable human and material resources endowment of the country. This paper focuses on the role of the civil service against the growing expectations of the public. It looks at the 'political' context within, which the civil service operates and argues that positive cooperation or „organic solidarity‟, to quote Durkheim, is necessary if the general and specific development objectives of Nigeria are to be achieved. A number of interrelated issues are addressed. What is the nature and impact of the civil service vis-à-vis the drive toward development? What kind of cooperation must be forged between political office holders and career civil servants, on the one hand, and between them and the public, whose increasing expectations stare us at the face, on the other? What are the obstacles in the chosen task of harmonious working relationships between the two and what strategies could be developed to enhance such relations? What is emphasized here is the positive partnership of administrations and politicians in the quest for development.

La captura de los puestos públicos

Corruption is a cause of governmental inefficiency and people’s disenchantment with democracy, but it is also a result of seizing systems that have prevailed in the country in spite of everything. In the first part of this paper two approaches used to address corruption are identified and analyzed: the individualist and the bureaucratic approaches. Both of them mistakenly view corruption as a cause, as a problem among individuals that contradict social values or break rules pursuing self-benefit, and not as the result of a whole system that seizes public positions, assumptions and budgets. In the second part the paper examines the Mexican Career Civil Service -as one of the numerous institutions built in Mexico during the first decade of the 21st century-, its dimension -as an answer to public positions seizure-, scope, obstacles and challenges.